


Slow Boats and False Starts

by azephirin



Series: Born a Girl [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canada, Established Relationship, F/M, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-17
Updated: 2010-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Boats and False Starts

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer**: For a variety of reasons, this never happened.
> 
> **Author’s note:** Set in the same 'verse as [All Four Bodies of the Sky Burn Above Us](http://archiveofourown.org/works/74503), several years later. Title from "[Miles from Our Home](http://www.junkiesfan.com/lyrics_mfoh.htm)," by Cowboy Junkies.

Joey’s in that liminal space between sleeping and waking—not quite dreaming, not quite conscious—when she hears Tanith saying her name. _A dream,_ Joey thinks, curling tighter into her blankets, but then Tanith shakes her, gently, and repeats, “Joey. You going to get some food?”

Joey grunts.

“It’s the off-season now,” Tanith says. “We can eat whatever we want. I just had pancakes with butter—real butter, Joey, do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had real butter?—and maple syrup. And let me tell you, I know from maple syrup, and that was some good maple syrup.”

Preparing a glare, Joey turns over. Tanith’s sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling, which Joey’s scowl dampens not at all. “You have an agenda,” Joey accuses her.

“Yup,” Tanith agrees. “To get you out of bed and down to breakfast. Like I said, I’ve already been, but I could go again. And Stéphane’s down there, and I think he’s worried.”

“Stéphane worried is like Stéphane crying. It happens every half hour. He’s a drama queen and a mother hen.”

“He’s also being accosted by Joubert, who’s being very Gallic and tormented. You wouldn’t want to leave him alone with that, would you?”

“Fine,” Joey sighs, and sits up slowly, painstakingly, making sure that any grunts or mutters of discomfort are plenty loud enough for Tanith to hear.

Tanith coughs, and Joey decides to ignore any hints of _drama queen_ that may have been audible in the cough.

Dressed in the black boyshorts she slept in and nothing else, Joey putters around the room looking for clothes. She and Tanith have shared rooms so often that Joey’s breasts are by no means a novel sight, and Tanith waits patiently while Joey finds an old V-neck undershirt, one of her dad’s oxfords to go over it, and the battered jeans she wore on the airplane. Her hair is an irredeemable mess, and she digs out a bandanna to go over it. She’s tried to be good— obediently worn the slacks and skirts and pretty sweaters and heels that everybody said would make her look softer and gentler (more girly), offset her ferocity (masculinity) on the ice, make her more sympathetic (palatable) to the judges—and it got her precisely as far as sixth place. Fuck that; she’s done being soft and sympathetic. Or with trying to be.

Joey turns to Tanith, ready for “you’re wearing that?” or something similar, but Tanith just says, “Brush your teeth,” and then pushes Joey out the door.

+||+||+

Downstairs in the café, Stéphane is sitting by himself, reading—he must have gotten rid of Joubert, or Joubert must have gone to Gallicly accost somebody else. As Joey makes her way across the room, she doesn’t greet anybody, but a few people say hello to her, friendly but tentative, back to the old routine of “what do we say to the freaky girl?” but even worse now that the freaky girl lost. Joey says hi back but doesn’t stop until she’s standing in front of Stéphane.

“Joey,” he says with that soft French _j_, the one that makes her name sound more like “Zoë”; because Stéphane can’t conceal himself even if his life were to depend on it, she can hear the relief in his voice. “You should have something to eat,” he says.

“I’ll get something in a minute,” she tells him. She takes his book away, sets it facedown on the table, and drops into his lap.

Joey expects him to start, and he does—this isn’t how they do it. Discretion, that’s the name of the game. Don’t give anybody anything more to talk about; no ammunition. _We’re friends; he’s my best friend._ Girls like Joey don’t get beautiful Swiss boyfriends, because then the girls in the audience couldn’t pretend to have him for their own.

“I’m done hiding,” Joey says. “I’m done acting like we’re just friends—like that’s something we settled for. I’m not sneaking around anymore. I’m not pretending to be some kind of person I’m not. I want to sit here in your lap and eat some fucking pancakes and then go upstairs and have sex so loud we even embarrass the hockey players. What do you think?”

She watches as Stéphane tries to quash his smile; he can’t, quite, but he says, “I think now is maybe not the time for long-term decision-making.”

Joey shakes her head. “No, actually, it is. I’ve been playing this game too long; it obviously hasn’t worked; now I want to be who I actually am. Which is my weird-ass self, and also somebody who’s been in love with you since she was seventeen damn years old. It’s a decision I should have made a long time ago, but I’m stupid, so I’m just getting around to making it now.”

Stéphane replies by pushing Joey’s bandanna back, burying his hands in her hair, and kissing her.

It’s the first time they’ve ever done this outside of a locked room.

He’s not nicknamed “Prince Stéphane” for nothing: Everyone knows that he’s a gentleman, charming, just self-effacing enough, with perfect manners. His touch is usually light and careful, undemanding.

Not right now.

When they finally pull back from each other, Joey realizes that the room—and it’s a big room—has gone almost silent.

“I think we just came out of the closet,” Joey says, running a finger up and down the nape of Stéphane’s neck.

“I would say so,” he agrees. He attempts deadpan but fails spectacularly. “Would you like to retire upstairs?”

Joey laughs; she can’t help it. “‘Retire.’ Stéphane, I think that’s the most elegant version of ‘want to go up and fuck?’ I’ve ever heard.”

He merely raises an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah,” she says, “I do. But I want to have some pancakes first.”

Joey gets pancakes, and scrambled eggs with sharp cheddar, and coffee with real cream. She eats from her perch on Stéphane’s lap, and feeds him some of her pancakes, and thinks that, whatever their future might be, it probably won’t be so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> **Sequel: [Blind Items](http://archiveofourown.org/works/83780)**


End file.
